Kowolski opened his eyes and, just for a moment,  wondered if he was dead.  But after a few blinks, and some brief reflection, he decided that the red-cheeked, slightly sweaty face of Detective Barry Ronson would most likely not be a feature of the afterlife, so all things considered, he was probably still alive.

Ronson gave him a sheepish smile.  "Hey, you're awake.  How you feeling?"

As Kowolski considered this question, he realised that he was lying down.  What's that about?  He tried to sit up, but gasped and fell back, as searing pain erupted across his chest.

"Whoa there, tiger," said Ronson.  "That body armour of yours might have been bullet-proof, but it turns out it was only sword-resistant.  According to the doc, you got a nasty slash—thirty-seven stitches, I think he said.  He reckons you'll be right as rain, but you best take it easy for a while."

Groggily, Kowolski took in the sterile white of his surroundings, and the regular beeping sound emanating from somewhere nearby.  His brain formed the word hospital.  Slowly, he tried to organise the series of words that Ronson had said into meaningful sentences.  As the last one fell into place, his mind's eye was suddenly filled with the terrifying image of a gleaming sword swinging towards him, and abruptly his memory of the events prior to that dreadful moment fell back into place.

Heedless of the protests from his injured chest, he lurched forward and grabbed Ronson by the lapels.  "Bird," he gasped.  "Bloody big bird.  People.  Running.  Running people.  Woman!  Take woman!  Have to help!"

Gently, Ronson disengaged Kowolski's hands, and the panting agent collapsed back onto the bed.  "Um, yeah," said the detective.  "There is a woman missing from the house where you got the chop...er, where you got assaulted .  Not to mention her son.  And guess what?  Turns out they're the daughter-in-law and grandson of the old coot who got murdered at the nursing home."

Heart racing, Kowolski nodded.  When a killing spree and and giant bird attack both occur in the same sleepy town, on the same night, the odds of the two events being connected were bound to be pretty solid.

"Only, the thing is," went on Ronson, "it turns out that the old coot who got killed wasn't the old coot we thought he was.  He was actually the old coot from the room next door.  The coot we thought was dead is actually missing too.  Weird, huh?"

Kowolski raised an eyebrow at him.  Weird hardly began to cover the events of the past few hours.  "Please tell me we got at least some of the perps?  Somebody who might actually be able to shed some light on this whole crazy mess?"

"Oh, yeah.  We got three of 'em, at the scene."

"Three?  Fantastic.  What have they said?"

Ronson adjusted his collar.  "Er, not a whole lot.  They were dead."

Kowolski absorbed this in silence.  He sighed.  "How about the bird, then?  Any sign of that?"

"The bird.  Um, yeah.  No.  No sign.  Actually, your people—you know, the ones from the Agency—they've been all over the site, and they were actually kind of dubious about there really being a bird.  Reckoned it might be some sort of a mass hallucination, maybe brought on by stress.  Or by something in the water.  Or by, you know—something.  That's what they're telling the press, anyway.  The media's been going apeshit."

"A hallucination!" exclaimed Kowolski, wincing as his stitches pulled.  "I saw the bloody thing eat a zookeeper.  How the hell does a hallucination do that?"

"Yeah well, they've actually kind of changed their tune, now.  In light of other evidence."

"Other evidence?  What other evidence?"

"Well, for starters, the dog-handler backed up your story.  Took 'em a while to track him down, and when they tried to take him out of his box, he kept biting people, but eventually he calmed down enough to confirm that he saw the bird as well.  He's actually here, in the room next-door, under sedation."

"Is that it?"

Ronson's look became even more sheepish.  "Well, not exactly.  Earlier on, we did kind of get a call at the station, from the lady who lives in the house with the alleged bird in its yard.  She wanted to report a...well, a bird."

"The alleged bird?  Why the hell wasn't I told?"

"Well, you know how it is.  When you've just had a mass killing, bird reports kind of slip under the radar.  That's actually why I'm here—I felt kind of bad that we didn't act on it, at the time.  I've told your people about it now, though."

Kowolski grimaced, and tried to find a more comfortable position.  "Well, at least having a couple of other eyewitnesses should convince people that the bloody thing actually existed."

"Oh, and there was the feather, as well," added Ronson.

"The feather?"

"Yeah.  They found one in the yard."

"How the hell does a feather count as evidence?"

Ronson grinned.  "Well, this one's about two metres long."

Muttering under his breath, the junior CSI tech climbed through the attic's hatchway.  "Oh yeah, you go look in the attic, Lucas.  Oh no, don't you worry about the dead, robed guys in the garden, we've totally got them covered.  And the fork-in-the-neck dude, in the living room?  You know, the one in the black leather getup?  All sorted, no need for you to take a look.  Giant bird tracks in the backyard?  Hey, don't stress, Marcia's all over those.  You know what?  You can go check out the attic.  There's bound to be heaps of exciting stuff up there.  Yeah, right."

With a sigh, he slipped on a pair of yellow rubber gloves and started poking around.  "Wow, a box of old phone bills.  Fascinating.  Well, would you look at that, it's a freaking doll's house.  Any dead Kens in there?  Nope, 'fraid not.  Hmm, let's see what fascinating clues lurk in this mysterious looking wardrobe."

The door was locked, but as the big, old-fashioned key was sitting in the keyhole, he soon had it open.  Casting a bored eye over the interior, the combination of his inattentiveness and the dim light of the attic's low-wattage bulb meant it took him a moment to comprehend what he was seeing.

Which was somebody inside the wardrobe, looking back at him.

With a strangled yelp, the tech leapt backwards, fumbling around for something to defend himself with.  He grabbed the first thing he could find, and—heart hammering—brandished it at the stranger.  "Wh-who are you?"

Inside the wardrobe, the burly man, clad in black leather, cowered away from the stuffed toy giraffe being waved at him.  Defensively, he held his hands up over his head.  "M-me? I'm Ergan, kind sir.  P-please d-don't set your beast on me."

The lid of the trunk whirred open.  It was still raining.  Gingerly, Grandpa climbed out and then stretched, wincing as he did so.  "Ooh, my bursitis is giving me hell.  Funny, the trunk didn't seem half that small, thirty-seven years ago."

George climbed out and stood beside him.  "OK, what now?  Which way to find my mother?"

"Georgie, it's the middle of the night.  We're not going anywhere until the morning.  I got lost twice on the way to our house tonight—how well do you think I'm going to manage wandering around countryside I haven't seen for thirty-seven years, in the dark?  We need to wait for daylight."

Blinking the rain out of his eyes, George considered protesting, but decided against it.  After all, he was a stranger in a strange land and was hardly in a position to dictate terms.  Apart from which, he wasn't quite sure how to approach this new version of Grandpa.  The one that was apparently from another world, was deadly with cutlery, and didn't think twice about sacrificing his neighbour, in order to gain a five minute start on his enemies.  He pulled up his collar, in a vain attempt to stop the rain from running down his neck.  "In that case, we probably should have brought a tent."

Grandpa's dentures gleamed in the moonlight, as the old man grinned at him.  "A tent?  Why would we want a tent, when we've got a perfectly good trunk?"

"Uh, because the two of us barely fit inside of it?"

"Three of us," protested Lob.

Grandpa frowned at the little man.  "You still here?  Right, make yourself useful then.  Get that hatchway opened up.  It's pissing down out here."

Lob did as he was asked, and the base of the trunk swung upwards.  The little man vanished into the cavity below, Grandpa climbed in after him, and to George's astonishment, kept descending until he was out of sight.  His disembodied voice drifted up from the darkness.  "Well, are you coming?  Or do you plan to keep standing in the rain, like an idiot?"

For want of any better options, George swung a leg over the edge of the trunk and tentatively lowered it into the cavity.  After a little searching, his foot encountered a rung.  He swung the other leg over and discovered another rung, below the first one.  Gradually, he climbed further down, feeling completely and utterly bewildered, a sensation he was rapidly becoming accustomed to.  Before long, he arrived at the foot of the ladder.

He found himself in a cosy room, dimly lit by a small lamp, mounted on one of the walls, and with several overstuffed armchairs clustered around a fireplace, in which Lob was trying to start a fire.  Having already taken possession of one of the chairs, Grandpa rubbed his hands together, as he watched the gnome at work.  "Hey, Grand-keeper, hurry it up there.  I'm freezing my arse off."  He glanced over at George, still standing dumbstruck by the ladder and blinking in the rain falling through the trunk's open lid.  The old man sighed.  "Georgie, were you born in a barn?  Get back up there and close the bloody front door."